


Five Crimes in the Name of Brotherhood

by freakylemurcat



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: 5 Things, Brothers, Children, Fluff, Gen, Growing Up, Kink Meme, SO MUCH FLUFF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-14
Updated: 2012-06-14
Packaged: 2017-11-07 18:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freakylemurcat/pseuds/freakylemurcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From this prompt on the Thor kink meme - </p>
<p>5 times Thor and Loki had moments of Epic Brohood, and 1 time they had an Epic Bro Sulk together because Odin caught them at something and made them scrub the latrines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Petty Theft

 

Thor loves his baby brother very much indeed - not only because he’s adorable, but because he’s a good look out.

If only Thor could persuade him to leave the blanket in his crib… He feels important explorers shouldn’t be carrying around fluffy green blankets on their adventures.

“We are just going to the kitchens,” says Loki, around his mouthful of blanket which he has staunchly refused to leave. He gives Thor that look that makes him feel very stupid indeed and then holds out his little pudgy hand. Thor takes it, because Loki’s too small to keep up on his own and he won’t abandon his little brother.

They sneak to the kitchens, huddling behind curtains and drapes as people approach, giggling nervously as footsteps tramp past. No one notices them, because they’re clearly amazing at being stealthy and not at all because it’s easier to just ignore the little royal terrors, until they get into the kitchen and not even Thor attempting to drag Loki into a cupboard saves them from being spotted by a cook.

“And what do our little princes want?” she coos, leaning down over them, all roundness and floury apron. Loki shrinks into Thor’s shadow, raising his blanket to his mouth and chewing on it nervously. Thor’s ready to be brave and keep his baby brother safe when Loki pipes up beside him.

 “We wanted some milk,” he says, voice muffled around his blanket. “Can we have some milk, please?” He’s using that sickly sweet babyish tone that Mother tells him off for and Thor realises his brother’s up to something.

The cook coos again and flutters off immediately. Thor stares after her for a second, stupidly, until Loki gives him a quick push and points at the high counters. Up there, somewhere, are the big jars filled with biscuits and treats and honeyed goodies. There’s a stool sitting up one of them, and Thor scrambles up it, crawls along the counter and heaves one of the lids open. It’s  full of deliciously spiced biscuits and he fills his pockets quickly.

 With a small grunt of effort, Loki throws his blanket up onto the counter by Thor. It takes him a second to work out Loki’s plan and he giggles with delight as he piles a heavy selection of the treats from the other jars into the centre of the blanket  before handing it back down to Loki and jumping off the counter. The cook returns with two big cups filled to the brim with milk, just  as the pair of them arrange themselves back into a picture of innocence, the blanket straining Loki’s arms.

“I will take them,” says Thor, puffing his chest up importantly. “I will carry them ‘specially carefully.”

 

_(They enjoy their spoils for the rest of the day, until neither of them can even manage the thought of dinner and Loki has to go to bed early with a stomach ache. Nothing touches their shared triumph though, even when Thor accidentally squeezes Loki goodnight too tightly and the whole thing repeats on them, as it were.)_


	2. Trespass

 

“No, no, this is a bad idea…”

Thor resists the urge to roll his eyes and pauses in the depth of another shadow until Loki catches up. His brother is twittering away like a scared bird, complaining all the time but following Thor anyway.

“Do not worry, brother!” he catches Loki’s hand, giggling when the younger boy twitches in fright. “Nothing in the shadows will get you with me around!”

“Because it will be too busy eating your fat head, I suppose,” says Loki. He’s close enough now for Thor to be able to see his face in the weak light of the moon, and he looks nervous. “We are going to get caught…”

“Do not be a scaredy-cat,” Thor teases, giving Loki’s hand a comforting squeeze. He’s been learning lots on the practice grounds since father decreed it was time he should start warrior training, and he’s confident he could take anything down. Loki is still too young, and still prefers hanging around their mother’s skirts. He comes adventuring with Thor though, because that’s what they do; it’s progressed from thieving biscuits from the kitchen and onto staying out past their bedtimes to explore the recesses of the castle.

Tonight they’ve gone farther than ever before, and Thor’s not sure if he would recognise these walls even in daylight. He can’t tell Loki that of course, and decides to tow him off before anxiety gets the better of him and he bolts.

“We are going to get caught, Thor,” Loki whines. “This is near the dungeons, is it not? I can smell the damp…”

“Oh, stop it,” says Thor, but suddenly he doesn’t feel quite as brave anymore. There are horrible people in the dungeons, ones mother won’t let anybody talk about in front of them. He’s not sure if his prowess with a wooden sword will handle bad men like that. Monsters in the shadows he could deal with.

Loki trips over something, nearly sending them both sprawling onto the stone floor, and things rattle off in the darkness where the moonlight doesn’t reach. Thor drags his brother to his feet and they run, heedless and breathless, darting up stairs and choosing turns at random until Loki cannot run any further and Thor is gasping for air himself. They collapse in heap, crawling to the sheltered safety of a tapestry and tucking themselves behind it; Thor wraps his arms around his brother and pretends this is just for Loki’s sake even as his own body shakes with the rush.

Eventually Loki peels himself away, giving a little cough to clear his throat and creeping along the line of the wall. He pauses and then turns his attention to the wall, straightens up and produces a door out of nowhere.

“Brother!” exclaims Thor, springing up in delight. “You have been studying magic again! That was amazing!”

That exceptionally unimpressed expression that Loki pulls is fixed on Thor again and he says, “The door was already here, you idiot,” before stepping through and vanishing from view completely. Thor yelps in alarm and scrambles to follow him, finding himself presented with a solid stone wall. Gingerly, he reaches out and touches it, feeling the distant crackle of magic under his fingers and grimacing as his hand simply pushes through the stone. On the other side someone grabs him and pulls him through; he ends up deposited on a ratty old carpet and Loki is nearly crying with delight.

“Is that not amazing!” he is gasping, “That is amazing! I have to learn how to do that!”

Thor rolls over and examines the portal from this side. Bright silvery light displays the set  up perfectly – an old door frame and battered door, heavily inscribed with runes, have been fixed to the wall. Inside the frame, the stones shimmer with magical flux, and Thor, although not a born magic user like his brother, can still sense the pull of such power. The attraction seems to centre in his spine and makes shivers crawl up his back, a sensation which he does not enjoy.

“You should,” he says, shaking himself and hopping up. “We could use it for quick getaways.”

Loki’s eyes shine with glee and he nearly plasters himself to the door frame in his quickness to examines the carvings.

The room is amazing, full of books and treasures and toys,  and the view is incredible. A ladder leads to the roof and they end up sitting there until sunrise, both cuddled under a heavy blanket that Thor discovers in a cupboard.

 

_(They make this their centre of operations, and it works perfectly until they try to scramble there after a prank gone wrong and find their mother and father snuggling in the window seat. The realisation that they’ve discovered their parents’ love nest only leads to more plotting, and then one day Odin All-Father can’t attend his courts because his breeches have all turned purple.)_


	3. Drunk and Disorderly

The first time Thor is allowed mead at the feasts he sips and sips at his flagon, unsure whether he likes it now but determined to grow to be one of the men who gulps it down in the blink of an eye. Loki eyes him sullenly from the other side of the table for the next year, until Frigga relents and permits her youngest son to share in the alcohol.

This turns out to be a bit of a mistake. Thor has built up a tolerance for the mead through the year, and takes hefty gulps at every mouthful of food. When he notices his little brother trying to match his intake, he forgets that Loki is not as practised as him and their competitive streaks shine through.

 

_(Thor wakes the next day in a duck  pond, Frigga standing over him with her arms crossed and a scowl on her normally serene face. Behind her, the Warriors Three are attempting to pry Loki out of a tree. Neither of them remember what in the hells happened, but even Volstagg assures them that it was truly impressive.)_


	4. Fraud

Heimdall sees all. This gets Thor into plenty of trouble, and, since both his parents like to use this to their advantage, there’s only one person he can turn to for help.

“A spell to hide you?” Loki raises his head from a dusty tome only momentarily. He would be giving Thor that effortlessly practised look of despair, but his eyes are rimmed with red from the powder shed off his book collection and he only manages a slightly pathetic stare. “What from?”

“Does it matter?” Thor attempts to hop up onto a bench to sit, and neatly knocks a collection of bowls and tubes over. The resulting spill eats into the wooden counter and Loki gives a huff of aggravation before magicking it all away with a wave of his hand.

Through their teenage years the pair of them had grown their separate ways – Thor preferring his warrior friends and their talents, while Loki confined himself to his library, making cautious essays out into the world to test his new spells in real life and occasionally prove that brawn wasn’t everything on the training grounds. When Volstagg had refused to practise with Loki about anymore – for fear of attacking someone who wasn’t actually there, or having his training weapon turned into a bunch of daisies mid-thrust – the younger prince had sulked for days, and the whole thing had turned into a massive argument. Months later Thor is still feeling the repercussions of a few unpleasant things he had suggested about magic users, and it grates on his nerves badly. He and his brother should be a team, not divided by petty squabbles.

“Yes,” Loki is saying peevishly, when Thor drifts back into the conversation. “It matters. Because hiding you from, say, a fish is much easier than hiding you from a man!”

“Why.. why would you need to hide from a fish?” asks Thor, just to see his brother hiss and seethe with momentary flustered embarrassment. He has long since discovered the way to aggravate Loki the most, is to pretend to be a touch dumber than he is. And since he knows Loki goes out of his way to pretend to be smart to aggravate him, it seems fair this way.

“I do not know! In case you need to catch it!” He jabs a long forefinger into Thor’s chest and says, “I thought you were meant to be the hunter.”

“I have never used magic to trap an animal,” he says, mildly, giving Loki a quick flick on the forehead to ward him off. “But I want to hide from a man.”

Now, Loki is giving him a curious look, even as he retreats behind his wall of books and scrolls. “Whom would this person be?” He pauses, and before Thor can say anything, his brother’s eyes light up. “No… You would not…” He bites his lip and then continues in a hushed, reverent voice. “Why would the golden boy need to hide from Heimdall?”

Thor beams. “Let us get lunch, and I will explain.”

**

In the end, Loki works for hours and hours and Thor grows tired of waiting. He goes to bed feeling a bit let down, and wakes in the morning to feel incredibly guilty, because Loki has clearly ploughed straight through the night working away in his little cubbyhole. He’s singed one of his sleeves and accidentally carved a rune into his own thumb, but he’s grinning madly and can barely sit still through breakfast.

He tows Thor away to their secret room, and shoves him into a chair that hadn’t even existed seconds before.

“Where are you intending to go like this?” Loki asks, prowling around Thor like a stalking beast. He is twitching with nervous energy, and shivering with tiredness, but he is grinning madly.

Thor thinks for a moment and then admits, “The boar hunt. Father said I was still too young, but I can manage it. How scary can some pigs be?”

Loki gives him another look, but says nothing, flitting to a pile of books in the corner. He studies a page momentarily and then flits back to Thor’s side.

“Get me a lock of hair from two of the men you know are welcome but cannot attend,” he says, “And I will have the spell ready by the morning of the hunt.”

“Two of the men?”

Loki’s smile widens even further and he hauls Thor to his feet with a sudden show of strength. “Well, I am coming too!”

 

 

_(The spell works perfectly – although it turns out that some pigs can be quite terrifying, especially when they’ve trapped you against a cliff face and no one can hear your cries for help. Loki and Thor spend the day gallivanting the shapes of two unknown warriors, and Thor even manages to spear a boar himself – with the help of a tree branch magicked into a spear, courtesy of Loki. It’s a marvellous day, and it neatly dispels any remaining iciness between them.)_

 


	5. Arson

This time the whole thing is entirely Loki’s fault, and Thor is too happy to blame him.

At least on his adventures the main risk is that something with far too many teeth eats them. On Loki’s adventures, you have to survive things with far too many teeth and the lengthy and undoubtedly confusing explanation as to why they are battling such monsters.

Currently, they’re most of the way up a mountain far out in the wilds, running low on food and trapped in a cave by a snow storm. Their fire is running low and not even the thick furs they have brought with them are keeping the cold out anymore. Thor considers their food stock mournfully, while Loki sits across from him, sharpening his daggers and staring into the fire.

“This beast we are hunting...” Thor says, “Is it any good for eating?”

“I suspect you will find out,” replies Loki, vanishing his daggers back into his sleeves. “Although you might find it a bit hard to skin.”

Thor chuckles and stows most of the food back into his knapsack, plucking a few strips of dried mutton out to tamp their hunger down for the evening. He has to force himself not to gulp the whole thing down in one, while Loki nibbles on his piece thoughtfully, still staring into the fire.

“Have you given thought to how we are meant to take down this thing?” Thor asks, through his mouthful of mutton. “You have still not properly explained what it is we are hunting. Only what you plan to use it for.” He swallows and a thought creeps up on him. “You said you wanted it for its scales… It’s not a bilgesnipe, is it?”

Loki scoffs and tucks himself up in his cloak. “Of course not.” He rolls over and then, just as Thor is just about to settle down for the night as well, adds, “It’s a dragon.”

**

By the time they have scaled another near-sheer rock face the next morning, Thor has almost forgiven his brother for this omission of details. However, when they haul themselves onto the platform at the top of this rock face and find the beast slumbering on top, he is no longer so sure.

“Loki, it is huge…” Thor hisses, gripping Mjolnir’s handle tightly. Indeed, the beast is massive; it’s great horse-y head the same size as a grown man, horns protruding sharply from the back of its skull, claws like scimitars scraping the snow as the dragon wriggled in its sleep.

“Think of your glorious return to Asgard,” says Loki, stepping forward across the snow, moving so lightly his feet barely dent the powder. “With those claws and teeth as evidence of your triumph. How could anyone not be impressed if we took down this creature?”

This logic is appropriate enough and Thor makes his move, winding his arm back and throwing Mjolnir as hard as he can against the rock face the dragon slumbers beside. The resulting rockslide buries the beast entirely, and throws a wave of snow back over the adventurers, reducing Loki to a spluttering mess. Thor calls Mjolnir back to him and tries to help his brother brush the snow from his armour.

“I feel that was unnecessary,” grumbles Loki, clutching onto Thor’s arm when the ledge shakes and the dragon shakes off the rock pile like it was a mere blanket, roaring angrily. “And unhelpful! Now, you have made it angry!”

The dragon springs at them, and they dive in opposite directions to avoid its snapping jaws. Thor nearly topples off the edge of the rock face they had struggled to climb all morning and shouts for Loki to be careful, but his brother is already struggling to ward off plumes of flame. His darker armour seems to attract the beast’s attention more, and he has to dodge and dive out of the way repeatedly as fangs snap near his limbs and blasts of fire threaten to set his cloak on fire. Immediately Thor springs into action and runs forward, Mjolnir raised high; his first blow catches the creature hard on a leathery wing and draws its attention to him. Unfortunately, as it swings around, it catches Loki hard in the midriff with a swipe of its tail and he goes flying into a snow drift with a yelp.

Thor dives out of the way of a fire blast and scrambles up the heap of rubble his initial attack had left – the dragon doesn’t appear to be able to see him properly and instead follows his trail of scent with flaring nostrils and gaping mouth. At the top of the pile, Thor pauses for a second until he sees Loki try to heave himself out of his snowy ditch and collapse back in with a wheeze, before he leaps. Mjolnir sweeps down in a perfect arc and he strikes the beast hard between its shoulders.

The monster’s scales crack and shatter under Mjolnir’s blow, and the dragon whips its head around, gaping maw open to catch Thor in its teeth. He springs away just in time, rolling down the slope and catching an unsteady handhold on a rock. Screaming and spitting fire, the beast is searching for him, sweeping its acidic yellow gaze across the snow. Loki is still lying there, winded from the blow from the dragon’s tail, and Thor struggles to get back onto the ledge so his brother won’t end up facing its wrath alone.

Nails digging into the frozen ground and using Mjolnir as an anchor, Thor heaves his upper body up onto the snowy platform, and heaves himself upright. To his horror, the dragon is mere metres away from Loki, nostrils flaring as it followed his scent.

“Beast!” he shouts, hoping to distract it and not really thinking through what will happen when he manages that. With its hungry gaze fixed on him again, its one working wing spreading  as it prepares to leap at him, the thought finally occurs, and he shouts, “Loki!” instead.

Fire springs from the ground, whipping up in snapping plumes and plunging down like a thrown spear, striking the beast exactly where Mjolnir had cracked and splintered its scales. Thor is thrown off his feet by the resulting explosion, and when he finally heaves himself back up the cliff face for the third time in fifteen minutes, the dragon is spread across a lot of the landscape and Loki is sitting up in his little snow ditch and looking pleased.

“How did you know fire would work?” Thor asks, hauling Loki to his feet and then turning to stare at the smoking corpse of the dragon.

Loki shrugs and wipes the snow from his leather breeches. “I was counting on you being your ridiculous hammer-happy self, anyway.” He brushes snow from Thor’s shoulders and gives him a happy smile as he produces one of his very well sharpened daggers from nowhere.

 

 

_(True to Loki’s word, Asgard is amazed  by the spoils of war they return with, and a great feast is thrown in their honour. Loki grins mysteriously the whole way through the formal meal, and then insists on everyone coming out to the balconies immediately after. Only Thor knows that the marvellous fireworks that blast out of nowhere and flare into amazing shapes and patterns are the exact same shades of silver and gold as the dragon’s scales were.  He grabs Loki around the shoulders and gives him a hefty bear hug as revenge for his brother’s circuitous scheme, while all the while feeling very smug that they had managed it so neatly.)_


	6. The Time They Got Caught - Contempt of Court

As it turns out, trolls are easy enough to fight, right until their death-throes bring down caves around your ears. The princes have had adventures go wrong before, but never quite on this scale. Normally one of them is still conscious enough to worry about the other, but this time, when Thor is pulled from the rubble he can only keep his eyes open long enough to catch a fleeting glimpse of his brother’s grey and bloodied visage before darkness sweeps in again.

**

He wakes in the healing rooms, feeling very sorry for himself indeed. Frigga informs him – her voice taut with worry and stress – that he has broken his arm and a few ribs, and that if he values his life at all, he will lie still and not whine about his period of bed-rest. For once, Thor does as he is told.

In the bed next to him, Loki sleeps like the dead; even cleaned up and bandaged he looks sickly, and Frigga obviously frets over him for the extra day it takes him to regain consciousness.

The first time he opens his eyes, Loki looks over at Thor and rasps, “This was definitely your fault…”. Thor replies that he’s certain it was a bolt of Loki’s magic that first loosened the rubble from the ceiling, and their mother looks like she would quite like to strangle them both.

**

Because of their latest adventure gone wrong, the princes, the Warriors Three and Sif all end up in front of Odin All-Father. He looks displeased in a sort of paternally fond fashion when they limp in to his private offices– Loki hobbling a few extra steps behind on his badly crushed foot – and gives them a proper dressing down.

“Trolls!” he says, “Six of you to fight a family of trolls!” He points to a massive canine tooth propped on his desk. “It took myself and a squadron of warriors to take a mated pair down, and you six think you can handle five?”

“Two were youngsters?” suggests Thor. This gets him a despairing look and he falls obediently silent

The Warriors Three are told they should have known better and sent off to do service helping police some of Asgard’s more pungent suburbs. Sif is banned from the training grounds for three months, and told to practise her embroidery, which goes down just as well as could be expected. And then the princes are left alone with their father.

“Sit,” he commands, and they both gratefully sink into the available chairs. Odin paces in front of them for a few minutes, silent and grim-faced, and finally turns to face them when he speaks. “I know that this ridiculous plan belonged to at least one of you in the beginning. Possibly it was even something the pair of you thought up together and then dragged your friends into, regardless of the danger. And  I can tell you now, it would be greatly in your benefit for you to tell me which of you thought it up. Otherwise both of you will be receiving the punishment.”

Thor looks over at Loki and says nothing. Loki licks his lips nervously, but he too remains silent. To be honest, they would struggle to separate their strands of culpability in this mess.

“Suit yourselves,” says their father. He reaches out and scrubs their heads like he would when they were small children and amusing him with their antics. “Once you are fit again, we will have a feast to celebrate you and your friends’ bravery.” He smirks a little as he adds, “And then the pair of you will be clearing the latrines at the training grounds. By hand. No magic allowed.” He laughs at their despairing expressions. “Did you think a few broken bones were punishment enough for keeping your parents awake with worry for nights on end? At least by the time you are done, we will be glad if you keep your distance for a while!”

**

They heal quickly and well, and the promised feast is spectacular. Unfortunately, they wake up the next morning to find a motley collection of tools at the foot of their beds and a map of all the latrines in the city that they have to clean.

“Father does not understand,” said Thor, leaning on his shovel and surveying the first line of latrines. “We simply work well too well together.”

Loki eyes his wheelbarrow with a baleful expression, “I think this is a grand opportunity for you to learn how to work alone.”

“Come now, brother!” says Thor, trying to sound enthusiastic. He remembers seconds too late that this is always a mistake when Loki is concerned, and gives up quickly. “We shall show the old man what we two can do when put together, and then we shall liberate a cask or two of his favourite mead from the cellar and give him a repeat of your five-hundredth birthday. How does that suit?”

“It sounds almost tolerable.” Loki hefts his rake over his shoulders and gestures for Thor to go ahead. “I have some interesting spells that turn skin orange I’ve been meaning to try.”

 

 

_(The latrines are spotless in short order, and the princes almost intolerable to be near for any length of time as a result.  A plague of orange-skin, small localised rain-clouds and a mysterious shortage of mead strike soon after, and Odin All-Father makes a note to separate the pair of them the next time they have been naughty. They’re nothing but a bad influence on each other.)_


End file.
